The observation results presented during the Polar Night Week conference in Longyearbyen (Norway) leave no doubt. The climate is warming, and the impact of these changes on the Arctic is particularly acute. Glaciers are retreating at an increasingly rapid pace. What was considered weather anomalies fifty years ago is now becoming the new normal.

Until recently, rainfall in the Arctic Circle in winter was not a normal phenomenon. In recent years, it has become a dramatic rule for nature. Water settling on the snow freezes, forming a several centimetres thick ice layer. Wild reindeer, which are excellent at digging mosses and lichens from below the snow, cannot break the hard ice and die of hunger. They also often injure their limbs on the sharp edges of the ice, and wounds in the Arctic heal very poorly. Animals die from infections, weakness, or bleed out.

'Fifty years ago we wondered whether humans could have an impact on the climate. Thirty years ago we tried to find out how humans affect the climate. Today we are trying at all costs to find a solution to minimize the impact of humans on the global climate', Kim Holmen from the Norwegian Polar Institute told PAP.

The rate of increase in average temperatures above the Arctic Circle is accelerating. Instead of reflecting sunlight like ice and snow, the rocks exposed by the retreating glacier heat up, melting the remnants of the ice cover and exposing more and more ground. The Norwegian road services use the same mechanism, scattering coal dust with helicopters along mountain roads inaccessible to snowploughs. The sunlight heats the rock, and it melts the snow and ice.

What benefits drivers in southern Norway, has disastrous effects for the northern part of the country. Perennial permafrost, which several decades ago began a meter underground, is now covered with up to 4 meters of unstable soil.

'The whole of Svalbard and many cities from Alaska and Canada to Scandinavia, Finland and Russia, are built on two-meter poles. Today, they are becoming insufficient, and buildings and key infrastructure for residents are collapsing under their own weight. They are sinking in the mud that was thin until recently', admits Heikki Lihavainen, head of SIOS (Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System).

The organization headed by Lihavainen brings together dozens of scientific institutions from India and Japan to Norway, creating a system for long-term monitoring of natural data in the Arctic. Poland has been contributing scientifically for almost 80 years. In 1957, the Institute of Geophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences established the first Polish research station in Svalbard, in Hornsund. Today, it is one of only four locations on the Norwegian archipelago where research is conducted all year round.

The Hornsund station has been joined by seasonal bases of Wrocław, Toruń, Poznań and Lublin universities, and since this year the University of Silesia with the BERA logistics centre. Poles constitute the second largest scientific community on Svalbard after the Norwegians. It is estimated that their contribution and scientific expertise in this part of the Arctic is also second only to Norwegian researchers.

'Polish scientists are loyal and responsible members of the SIOS system. Thanks to their research infrastructure, their activities and observations conducted at Polish stations, a special legacy is being created. Continuing the many years of work of Polish scientists will have a huge impact on scientific understanding and our knowledge', Heikki Lihavainen concludes.

From Longyearbyen, Mieszko Czarnecki (PAP)

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